We Want to Know What DreamCatcher/HP Thinks

[Walpurgisnacht]

Fellow gamers, We've laid down our grievances and our praise for the game. Now what I'd like to see is what DreamCatcher and Heuristic Park think of all these reactions.

DC/HP: Please refrain from giving us patronizing comments like "we are considering what you've all inputted."

We want to know what you think of all the negative reactions to the game. It's natural for a game to have detractors, no matter how spectacular it is. But when the negativity rises to this magnitude, I'm sure HP and DC would agree that something is wrong-- although I doubt if they would confirm this.

Maybe it's wishful thinking on my part that they actually would admit alarm, but hey, you never know. But in case any of the developers/publishers do respond to this post, please do us a favor: be candid.

HP? DC? The floor is yours.

[Xyyth]

They aren't going to say anything. It's corporate practice to stay silent about such things without giving specifics because you have two entities here: the developers and the distributors. They probably have a binding contract that forbids them to discuss problems with the game, let alone blame each other publicly.

[Walpurgisnacht]

I can dream, can't I? LOL

[Gammamaster]

I managed to freeze a goblin on the ambush area, just before entering the sewer on my head for about 6 seconds since I was bored...

So, bump..

I tell ya what.. Can we cound on at least 2 more patches? EB games told me to get lost when I asked if I could return it..

[Plague]

I wanted to take a moment and talk about this movement on the forum that seems to largely consist of the end-user and customer sense of entitlement for those who bought Dungeon Lords. Please read on and see my 10 points below.

You don't know me but I used to make video games. Now I manage a large non-profit company in the healthcare industry here in North America. Why? I earn more money per year than I would earn in a decade making computer games and I actually have a great deal more time to play them.

Historically those of us in the industry in the late 80's and early 90's believed there was potential for making large amounts of money in games. Considering our costs for a few years we were able to do quite well with limited investment.

Later as projects (as the consumers demanded) had to become more complicated and our art staff grew from 2.5 half to 85 traditional artists and 35 animators we were unable to gamble on making the kinds of games that we all wanted to play. In just a few years we went from making reasonable titles with small, manageable teams to mind boggling efforts to produce two or three major titles a year at a cost that could be recouped by the 50,000-100,000 people actually buying our products.

After a few years of pumping out games with a 33% major success rate (and near profitability) we opened our doors to the idea of publishing, co-authoring and co-developing.

So within a year we "published" 15 crap titles, 3 major blockbusters and had partnered not only with another large sized game company but had attracted the interests of the major Hollywood and New York money. We diversified and experienced a profit for the first time for more than one or two quarters. Ultimately it was this thinking that was the beginning of the end of the "old ways" of game authoring, development and publishing. I'm sorry about that.

Now I can't even list the number of publishers and studios that release games each year - they are purchased, sold and go out of business so fast that we're lucky to have them around for a sequel to anything we like playing.

Today I see a much safer distribution channel for console developers, much smaller costs and losses and a broader audience to consume what is developed. This hurts real badly. I can't stand consoles and to me they represent the lowbrow, unsophisticated in the gaming world. The kind of player that wouldn't appreciate Ultima Underworld or Dungeon Lords or a flight simulator and just as soon accept KarateKing on there Sanyo telephone while waiting in line at the Department of Motor Vehicles.

Sad? Yes, but true. People out there have no patience; no understanding of the costs involved in developing entertainment and is sadly easily distracted and entertained.


There are a number of reasons why I think we're going to be lucky to see PC games developed to a level we would like:

Business Indicators:

1. Major companies ultimately have a stake and control over what is made, how long it is made for and when they expect a return on their investment. The days when games were created, developed, distributed and maintained by a small group of clever, dedicated gamers are over (or hiding from the big companies).

2. The cost of forming and providing for a staff capable of creating a PC video game with 40 hours of game play content, art, sound and something akin to clever coding is between $6 and $15 million dollars per year.

3. The average lifecycle of a development project for a medium sized entertainment title is between 14 and 24 months. Scope, Quality, Cost and Time are all adjusted to fit the investor’s budgets. As the investors become larger and more profit oriented (we all do when we're over 30) they constrain Cost and Time, which ultimately impacts Quality and Scope.

4. After R&D, debts and interests, licenses and fees, publishing and distribution costs my company was lucky to see between $4 and $7 a copy for everyone's hard work.

5. There are no major technology companies creating strong frameworks or "toolkit" technologies that can be used by smaller companies at low cost to decrease their time to market. Although making games is an inherently human process, licensing technologies saves a lot of time, but remains too costly for many small companies. We once hoped Microsoft would remedy this for the PC, instead they built the XBox and pretty much ensured the death of the PC games market. They're a bunch of committed capitalists, God bless them!

6. Most of the management and leadership in the entertainment industry has never worked in technology outside entertainment and have no idea how to create good, quality technology on time. They may have experience in business or entertainment, but none that I have ever known have come from a technology company with any viable experience.

Compensation may be one thing stopping that move, but I think the mix of Hollywood and Media company ownership will ensure that the worst possible CEO and creative types remain in control of these "pet" divisions of their corporations. Great game designers usually make terrible business people. Great technologists often make disastrous business people. Ultimately there are far too many terrible, terrible business people in games and entertainment.

7. Game prices have been fixed for a decade. While the price of cars, rent, food, gas, etc. has risen every few years the actual game sticker prices (other than f*ing Doom 3) have stayed the same. I attended a meeting in 1994 with marketing and consulting firms to discuss a change to the $39.99 price tag. Their market research indicated 90% of the market would not buy a game over $50. Nintendo and Sony can be blamed. Their death grip on the price of their titles, profit sharing plans and fixed license costs really forced the smaller American companies to fall in line.

For some reason though that $50 was a benchmark for PC games we just couldn't exceed without offering either oral sex, stock shares or acreage. This is stupid people. We need to pay more for products, we really do. $19.99 is still acceptable for a little title, $29.99 for a mature looking but not quite "full rate" title and $39.99 is still average with $49.99 and even $54.99 popping up. Why did it take more than 10 years? Get a job. Pay more for games.


8. The traditional distribution channels such as EBGames, etc. have all been purchased by similarly large, profit driven corporations. They demand a very large cut of the sales in their stores. I once had a title go to market that took longer to negotiate with Electronics Boutique than develop and test. These leeches need to be tamed and while electronic distribution will kill them in the future, America's bandwidth is generally so poor and costly (thanks to other large f*ing corporations) that it isn't feasible to avoid them entirely.

9. Game industry people are some of the cleverest people around, but their tight budgets, bad management and rush-rush-rush reality limits their ability to do anything with a focus on quality or reliability. The fact games run at all simply amazes me. Technologies and best practices simply aren't invested in; employers don’t invest skill development in. Time and market pressures have convinced these now very large game companies that behaving like a real software development company is impossible. They must produce, publish, profit or die.

10. The industry lives because there are people who want to make games over any other thing imagined. Clever people, dedicated people willing to give up having relationships, sex, food other than pizza and most importantly playing video games. The fact good games are still made impresses me and gives some hope. It shows that some companies and even more likely a small group of individuals in a number of different companies know what they’re doing and care about getting it done.

These people work nights, weekends, birthdays, holidays, movie releases (other than Star Trek and Star Wars) and vacations. Back in the dot.com days I tried to hire a number of former game developer employees to one of the several ventures I worked on. I couldn’t get a one of them to jump, despite 45% actual pay raises and more than 1200% total compensation increases.



I realize I'm rambling, it might be the wine or the jet lag, but I wanted to just blog this out for you. In short - game development is extremely difficult to accomplish, it is agonizing and fraught with challenges and sacrifice by those that attempt it.

So I would really appreciate it if you would sit down, stop filling this forum with your uninformed, whiny, "sense of entitlement" and play this - or any other game that I HOPE, but fully doubt you purchased.

Plague

[HakweaKumlar]

Plague

Other companies manage to produce quality works in the time the set out. Perhaps then these small compaines, like dream catcher, and hp should set their sights lower until they can manage bigger projects.

Blizzard managed to produce quality games back when they had a low budget.

I wish more companies were like them. I wish this game did not have all its flaws.

[Residuum]

To Plague: Sir, while I respect your knowledge and opinion, it still remains that an unfinished product was placed on the market. There is no sense of entitlement here; they want me to spend money on their product yet it is unfinished, and that, no matter what industry we are discussing, is just a poor practice.

[Plague]

HakweaKumlar,

Thanks for your reply. Was just about to head to bed.

I've not experienced any quality issues per se. I get the gyst of the game, but when I read other people's comments about it I realize how far from ideal it is.

But for me it was worth the dollar amount and I'll keep playing it. Hopefully we'll see some improvement, but since I've only spent about 15 hours into it and I'm STILL having fun dueling with rats... Who knows. Maybe I'm the stupid one.

The hardest part of supporting the "don't like it, don't buy it or buy again" mentality is that with most stores refusing to take back products that are open all of the risk is in the consumers hands.

This plain sucks.

Has anyone looked in the back of their manuals? (If their game has one?)

My companies used to offer a 30 day no questions asked return policy. Wouldn't it be nice to see that again?

Plague

[Plague]

To Plague: Sir, while I respect your knowledge and opinion, it still remains that an unfinished product was placed on the market. There is no sense of entitlement here; they want me to spend money on their product yet it is unfinished, and that, no matter what industry we are discussing, is just a poor practice.

Ever bought a Ford?

[Plague]

To Plague: Sir, while I respect your knowledge and opinion, it still remains that an unfinished product was placed on the market. There is no sense of entitlement here; they want me to spend money on their product yet it is unfinished, and that, no matter what industry we are discussing, is just a poor practice.

Actually the publisher and developer deemed the product of suitable quality and completeness to deliver to the market.

What's worse you bought it and installed it. Which unfortunately means that you legally agree.

I joked earlier about buying a Ford, but a software point in case is "Battlecruiser 2000" or whatever. How many stinking copies of that did I buy before I could get it running? Four, but none ever ran. That to me was the greatest marketing coup of the PC Game era.